American Logs

American Logs were originally produced by the Halsam corporation

Montgomery Ward had the exclusive rights for the sale of Lincoln Logs and J.C.Penny, a competing department store chain, contacted the Halsam corporation to copy and manufacture them under the Halsam label for them.  Halsam refused to duplicate them, but instead applied their own spin by creating a similar but different log toy.

These log toys were called "Frontier Logs" in the south as a direct competitor to the name "Lincoln Logs". 

The logs changed even further by becoming square and compatible with Lincoln Logs.  The word "American" was later added as a selling point.

The peaks for the structures are created by building up interlocking logs that are angled on the ends and get smaller to the peak.  The green slats are similar to those in the Lincoln Logs sets, but they're a little thicker with a thin slit going down each of the sides.  This slit allows the roofing slats to be interlocked to appear like they overlap one another.  As I was growing up and playing with them, I found the American Log roof slats and Lincoln Log roof slats were pretty much interchangeable.

In 1962 the Halsam company was purchased by the Playskool company who already owned the similar Lincoln Log toys.

Halsam filed for trademark registration of the American Logs name in 1969, while owned by Playskool.  The application cites the date of 1935 as when they entered the toy market.  The earliest advertisement that I've found for American Logs was from 1939

I've found there are two distinctly different sizes made by the Halsam company.  The traditional, or senior sized set that is compatible with Lincoln Logs and the smaller size, that's about 1/3 the size of the traditional logs.

Both were manufactured by Halsam and are labeled as American Logs.